The Most Bizarre Foods Andrew Zimmern Has Ever Eaten

Cow placenta, it seems, is right up Andrew Zimmern’s adventurous alley

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Zimmern travels the world over eating some of the strangest food known to man, but he does so with a purpose.

Celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern has made a career out of eating strange things — hence the name of his show,Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. While much of the show’s appeal relies on an ick factor – as in, “I can’t believe he ate that!” – Zimmern is actually much more about helping the public expand its culinary horizons.

It might seem strange to people in some parts of the world, for example, that in the United States, bottom-feeders like lobster and crab are seen as a delicacy, while at the same time we’re incredibly squeamish about eating insects. Zimmern himself is a great advocate of bugs as food. In his Reddit AMA, he said “It's crucial that we expand our food horizons to account for the massive problems we face over the next 50 years in trying to feed our hungry planet. There are many insects that are delicious, nutritious, and represent full-circle sustainability. I've based much of my work of the last 10 years in trying to move people away from the awful habit of practicing contempt prior to investigation.”

That said, it doesn’t always make the delicacies and foods that Zimmern eats any less, well, gross to those who aren’t as adventurous. Sure, it helps that Zimmern himself is so enthusiastic about exploring foods from different cultures. His adventurousness has taken him all over the world, sampling all different sorts of cuisine, and displaying an openness that all travelers aspire to but few achieve.

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A lot of people may not be able to stomach most of the items on this list, but here are some of the strangest, weirdest, most bizarre things that Andrew Zimmern has ever eaten.

Animal Penises

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It’s kind of impossible to pick from the long list of penises that Andrew Zimmern has consumed: throughout the course of the show, he has eaten more than 50 different typesof this animal organ. That said, the strangest depiction in the show did not involve Zimmern himself: attending a circumcision ceremony for the coming of age a 5-year-old boy in Madagascar, he witnessed the grandfather of the young boy involved eating the severed foreskin. According to the Travel Channel, the grandfather eats the foreskin as a symbol of strength..

Bamboo Rat

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While in Thailand, Zimmern found a rodent for sale in a northern market that he wasn’t familiar with. He bought it and took it to a cook in the same marketplace for preparation. It was not gutted, just covered in salt and slapped on a grill. “I actually was somewhat excited about trying this until about 10 seconds ago when he sort of split open and the smell of his entrails sort of flooded the market place,” Zimmern said. As he bit into the stinky grilled rodent, he said, “This is like jumping off a mountain, I swear to gosh.”